Dinner

Chicken soup in a bowl over rice
Dinner, Recipe

Instant Pot Chicken Soup

Anytime anyone gets the sniffles in my house, we make chicken soup. All I know is, when we get sick, there’s nothing quite as comforting as a bowl of chicken soup. Using a pressure cooker makes it easier to whip up a batch and be on sick-kid-duty all in the same day.

Roast chicken plated with potatoes, rice, and vegetables
Dinner, Recipe

Roasted Chicken with Potatoes

You can prepare this simple-yet-elegant chicken dish the night before, when no children are around to chuck stuffed animals at you, or crab crawl in your path, or shout odd phrases like “Banana juice!” at you. So peaceful, so quiet. Just you and the chicken in the kitchen.

Brown beans and rice, plated
Cubanisms, Dinner, Recipe

Brown Bean Soup

Brown bean soup was my favorite bean soup growing up, and to this day it’s still comforting to me. It’s an easy soup to make well. For the adventurous cook, these beans are a blank canvas. You can do so much with them.

Cuban Picadillo, plated
Dinner, Recipe

Cuban Picadillo

We are seriously living in strange times.  I recently had to venture out of the house to make a much needed trip to the grocery store.  Barren shelves.  Face masks.  Vinyl gloves.  Going to the grocery store without my 3 kids in tow used to feel like such a luxurious experience.  Now, I’m trying to get in and out as quickly as possible, trying not to touch anyone or anything other than the few items the store managed to restock since people lost their minds and snatched up all the toilet paper. But I was able to find ground beef, so looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys!

Carne con papas over rice
Dinner, Recipe

Instant Pot Carne con Papas

Here comes another quintessentially Cuban dish: Meat and Potatoes! No seriously, that’s the name. Carne con Papas sounds like it could be anything that involves meat and potatoes, but it’s actually a pretty specific dish recognizable to Cubans and Cuban Americans like me, and lots of families have their own variations on how to cook it. It’s a tomato-based beef stew with quartered potatoes, served over a plate of white rice.

Red curry tilapia over rice
Dinner, Recipe

Red Curry Tilapia

I fell in love with Thai food when I lived in New York. There’s this really amazing restaurant, Frankly Thai, around the corner from where my in-laws live in Franklin Square, NY. My husband and I will still sneak out to Frankly Thai on a date night every so often when we visit, but we’ve never taken the boys. As anyone with allergies knows, eating out at restaurants is… complicated.

Guiso de maiz, plated
Dinner, Recipe

Guiso de Maiz, A Corn Stew

I’ve tried to find this dish in various places. I’ve asked Latino friends about it. I scoured the internet. I’ve read old Cuban cookbooks I’ve had the joy of receiving from my mother, and all I can say is nobody seems to make the dish quite like this.

Black bean soup over rice
Dinner, Recipe

Super Easy Black Bean Soup

For me, Black Bean Soup is a bowl of Home. It’s the ultimate comfort food—warm and savory, it’s the taste of my childhood. It’s traditionally served over rice, and is enough of a meal to stand on its own, but pairs beautifully with Cuban pork chops or Cuban steak.